The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family by Duong Van MaiElliottReview by: Lucian W. PyeForeign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1999), pp. 184-185Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049511 .

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Recent Books

Asia and the Pacific LUC?AN W. PYE

China Joins the World: Progress and Prospects. EDITED BY ELIZABETH ECONOMY

AND MICHEL OKSENBERG. NewYork

Council on Foreign Relations Press,

1999, 260 pp. $22.50 (paper). The Paradox of Chinas Post-Mao Reforms.

EDITED BY MERLE GOLDMAN AND

RODERICK MACFARQUHAR.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1999, 448 pp. $55.00 (paper, $24.95). These two symposium volumes seek to

explain China from different perspectives? but as with the blind men and the elephant, they provide somewhat different pictures. China Joins the World focuses on China's

international relations, askng what

Western policies might induce China to become a constructive participant in

international institutions and regimes. In general, the authors are

optimistic about socializing China in this direction

and see most Chinese officials as anxious

to become effective international players. In contrast, the Goldman-MacFarquhar volume covers the more

problematic

questions of elite politics and the broad

discontent unleashed by economic reforms.

By confronting the problems fragmenting Chinese society, the authors present a less

optimistic picture than Economy and

Oksenberg, but their account also makes

more understandable the xenophobic

explosion after the nato bombing of

China's Belgrade embassy last spring. In a strange way, the two books'

differences mirror a peculiarity in U.S.

China relations. Both governments seem

anxious to separate domestic developments

from interstate relations. The authors in

the Economy-Oksenberg volume hold out

the hope that this is possible, but Goldman and MacFarquhar's authors provide considerable evidence that it is not.

Orphans of the Cold War: America and the

Tibetan Struggle for Survival, byjohn kenneth KNAUS. NewYork

PublicAffairs, 1999,400 pp. $27.50. From 1951 to 1974, the United States pro vided support to the Tibetan resistance,

largely through the c?a. A cia veteran and

the key case officer for Tibet, Knaus tells in

blow-by-blow detail the complex story of

the operations, from the Colorado training of Tibetan fighters and the air drops of

troops and weapons into Tibet to the U.S.

support of the Dalai Lama in India and

diplomatic maneuvers at the United Na

tions. Knaus is unsparing in his criticism

of the cia's mistakes. As one example, he

cites the air drops that attracted flocks of

Tibetans to the drop spots?but then

tragically backfired after they inadvertently alerted the Chinese where to attack. His

story makes it clear, however, that the cia

did not attempt to stir up a rebellion but

supported an essentially Tibetan initiative.

This moving account of the Tibetans'

valiant efforts to resist the Chinese occupa tion captures the daring spirit of the early

Cold War years and the mixture of idealism

and crafty scheming that characterized

American operations at the time. It also

underscores the limited effectiveness of

such covert operations.

The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the

Life of a Vietnamese Family,

by duong

van mai elliott. New York Oxford

University Press, 1999, 608 pp. $30.00. In this vivid and personal account, Mai

[184] FOREIGN AFFAIRS -Volume 78 N0.5

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Recent Books

Elliott succeeds in bringing to life the social and political realities of modern

Vietnam. Her great-grandfather was a

Confucian mandarin-scholar in traditional

Vietnam, her grandfather a high official

under the French, and her father an official

during the transition to independence in

1954. Her own generation of siblings and

cousins experienced the agonies of the

Vietnam War. Today, her once tightly knit

family is scattered in America, France,

Canada, Australia, and Vietnam. Now

married to an American, Mai Elliott

brilliantly captures the social and psycho

logical strains of native officials under

colonial rule as they sought the elusive goals

of national identity and modernization.

She is equally impressive in recounting the

conflicting pressures that all Vietnamese

had to endure in the last days of the war,

when they had to accept the fact that the

future lay with the communists.

Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, rev. ed. by david p.

chandler. Boulder: Westview Press,

1999, 264 pp. $16.00 (paper).

Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War. by

Stephen j. morris. Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1999, 315 pp.

$45.00 (paper, $16.95). The story of modern Cambodia is so

tragic that it takes moral resolve to read

about it. It also raises some perplexing

puzzles. How could the gentle Buddhist

Cambodians become so violent? What knd

of evil genius was Pol Pot, who presided over the slaughter of more than a million

of his compatriots? In writing his book, Chandler explored every bit of evidence

about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, but the more evidence he uncovered, the

more bland and ordinary the Cambodian

leader became. No traumatic experiences, social or economic difficulties, or

psycho

logical problems explain Pol Pot's brutal

actions; the author found accounts only of a mild-mannered, pleasant personality

who was a normal but mediocre student.

Born into a family with close connections

to the royal palace, Pol Pot was randomly selected as one of the first hundred

Cambodian students after World War II

to study in France, where he never took

any examinations or received a degree.

What did set him apart was joining the French Communist Party, which gave him instant high status among the local

communists when he returned to Cambo

dia. Pol Pot then spent seven years fighting enemies and rising to the top with purge after purge. Chandler concludes that this

experience in Cambodia is probably what turned him into a vicious kller.

The paranoid atmosphere that

enveloped the leaders of both the Cambodian and Vietnamese communist

parties also dominates Morris' vivid

analysis. His systematic study delves

into the causes of the only extended war

between two communist states, seekng to explain the seemingly irrational decision

of weak Cambodia to attack the much

stronger Vietnam and the equally irrational

Vietnamese provocation of China. As

the first Southeast Asian specialist to gain access to the recently opened Moscow

files on the Indochinese Communist Party, Morris ably documents the paranoid

style of thinkng that characterized

these Marxist-Leninist leaders. Given

the mindset that Morris describes, the

behavior of both Pol Pot and the leaders in Hanoi becomes more understandable, if not forgivable.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS September/October 1999 [185]

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